Have consumers have been subjected to bad parenting techniques?
I’ve been thinking about James Murdoch’s rant at the Abu Dhabi Media Summit last week. He said piracy was no different from “going into a store and stealing a handbag”. Well, yes James if you can make an exact digital copy of that handbag for no cost. Anyway, that’s not my point. What I found interesting was the comment from Maurice Levy, chief executive of French advertising group Publicis, who posited, “My grandchild doesn’t believe he’s stealing”. That’s the interesting issue.
Why don’t younger generations think it’s stealing? This question is the nub of the problem. I have an analogy that I like to use to explain why this is. We can think of consumers as being brought up like bad children and the the corporation’s are the bad parents who have brought up their consumer kids with bad habits.
Cast you mind back to the eighties. Back then Sony was just a consumer electronics company, no Sony Music, no Sony Pictures. They just made great Walkmans and… brilliant ghetto blasters with Tape-to-tape recording decks. You could walk into WHSmiths, pick an album from the Top 20 shelf, and low and behold on the shelf right next to the Top 20 were the blank tapes. Everyone knew it was wrong but did it anyway, because it was made very acceptable. Firstly by consumer electronics companies and secondly by the retailers. Classic bad parenting skills, no consistency.
Is it any wonder that consumers have developed these attitudes? Given advances in technology that can knock any business model for six the only way for businesses to survive is to engage with audiences and stop dictating to them. This connection is key to survival. To push the analogy a bit further, I’d suggest you could liken today’s consumers to teenagers. They’ve grown up a bit, have a certain amount of self awareness and will rebel if they feel they’re being talked down to. And just like teenagers, consumers do want to talk and aren’t always belligerent. You just have to talk to them in the right way.
Photo courtesy of James Curtis from Flickr
I think that it is definitely true that many corporations have been involved in “parenting” consumers in particular directions that they come to regret.
There is a difference between “illegal” and “immoral” and the moral world is much more complex – but laws which try to enforce a morality that contradicts human instincts will always need persuasion, rather than just coercion.
Persuasion has helped reduce “drink driving” in the UK – the law helps too, but new generations are less likely to drive drunk, because the social status has changed – through persuasion.
However, reproduction of music is an ancient custom. Sharing the songs we like is deeply rooted in the human psyche. The technological wheel has turned and it’s biting into company profits… but I don’t know how easy it is to persuade people that all sharing is wrong… and the danger of the technology is that one digital copy goes a lot further than a taped copy…